National Library of Australia - Gateways>

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 46 | August 2000


Automated call slips on the way

National Library project team

The National Library project team recently celebrated the successful completion
of stage 1 of the automated item delivery project.

By later this year, initial testing will be completed for an automated requesting system enabling clients to obtain material from the National Library’s stacks for use in the reading rooms. This major project will provide greater efficiency in the delivery of items and improve the service to our clients.

Clients will be able to place requests via the online catalogue. The requests will print in the relevant stack and the items will be supplied to the appropriate reading room. Material in use will be recorded as being on loan to a specific reader, thus enhancing the Library’s ability to recall or locate material not returned in the designated period.

One of the major obstacles to this project is that only a small portion of the collection has been bar-coded. New acquisitions have been bar-coded since late 1991, but until recently retrospective bar coding has proceeded at a slow pace. In July 1999, a project was commenced to add holdings for additional copies, and bar code all copies of material in the Australian Collections where we have multiple copies but only one holdings record.

The first part of the project is nearing completion, with a total of around 25 000 items now linked via bar codes. Replacement copies are being sought for some of the material that could not be located. Meanwhile, the end of the ‘NL’ part of the project was a cause for celebration for the project team. The second part of this project is to tackle older material from the Australian Collection.

This is proving even more challenging for our hard working contract staff, as considerable detective work is needed to determine probable locations for additional copies. Many online records for this material lack a size designation, and past practice was to shelve additional copies of Australian material in the General Collection, not the Australian Collection. As items are found, they are being rehoused in the Australian Collection, thus making it easier for subsequent retrieval.

The project has been a cooperative exercise between a number of operational areas of the Library. The impetus for the project has come from the Integrated Library Management System (ILMS) Unit, which is undertaking the automated call slip printing implementation. A small contract team has worked diligently on the project, with the assistance of Stack Services and Australian Collection Development and Legal Deposit Unit staff.
Margaret Kennedy

| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |

Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au

Gateways logo